(scienceblogs.com): Many of you may remember a time when music-stealing was rampant on the internet. Apple changed this situation by establishing a new kind of marketplace. Now people pay for music and download it from iTunes. What if there was a third party group, with an iTunes-like model, where scientific publishers would make papers available for purchase? Could this kind of model work?

(techeye.net): Publishers are stuffing up ebooks by handing them over to programmers rather than editors and layout artists. Ebook designer Chris Stephens, who created Alice iPad app, has said that major publishers have completely abdicated responsibility for producing the digital versions of their catalogues and it is all handed over to amateurs.

(wired.com): For too long, the measurement of scientific contribution has centered on the publication. Whether through the number of articles, the citations those articles have by other articles, or even other far more complicated metrics, most scientists are still measured by a derivative of the research article, the basic technology of scientific publishing that is well over 300 years old.0020But science is much more than that. It's ultimately about being involved in making discoveries and creating new knowledge.

(archinte.ama-assn.org): In a highly competitive scientific environment, authorship decisions are important. Including authors who do not meet authorship criteria dilutes the merits of other authors and may lead to inappropriate academic advancement and have a corrupting and discouraging influence on research.1-2 To ensure the honesty of the scientific process, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) defined 3 criteria for authorship eligibility, which, taken together, are indicative of personal effort and accountability.

(nytimes.com): American taxpayers have long supported research directed at understanding and treating human disease. Since 2009, the results of that research have been available free of charge on the National Library of Medicine's Web site, allowing the public (patients and physicians, students and teachers) to read about the discoveries their tax dollars paid for. But a bill introduced in the House of Representatives last month threatens to cripple this site. The Research Works Act would forbid the N.I.H. to require, as it now does, that its grantees provide copies of the papers they publish in peer-reviewed journals to the library.